The Evil Dead (1981) - review

1981 (USA)

2010 Sony Pictures Home Ent Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

If I'm honest I'd not been looking forward to this. Not the film, even though it's been the best part of twenty years since I'd last seen it, I was having trouble with whether this had a place on a zombie film list.

It seems I was worrying about nothing. Not only was the film everything I remembered and more but I do think the possessed kids in the cabin in the woods definitely tick a lot of the right boxes albeit if on a different tangent to what we've mostly seen before.

Let's cut to the chase. The Evil Dead is one of the most influential horror films of all time for a reason. The ridiculously young writer and director Sam Raimi aided by Bruce Campbell who plays the now iconic Ash Williams looked at the crop of horror films abusing the drive in theatre market and fashioned a ridiculously ambitious, totally over the top film of their own. With a tiny, when compared to modern efforts, budget they got everything right with sumptuous directing, perfect casting, exquisite performances, chilling sound track and genuinely frightening make-up and effects; it really is the perfect blend of horror, gore, tension and ridiculousness.

Now I'm not going to go on too much about a plot which is now so uniformly recognised it's a trope of its own. Five college students choose to holiday in a run down isolated cabin in the woods. In the cellar they find an ancient Sumerian human skinned  Book of the Dead (the films original title) and a tape recording from the late archaeologist who dug it up. Playing the tape they wake an ancient evil with dire consequences. First the forest awakes attacking and raping Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) who returning to the hut is the first to be possessed. After Ash and Scotty (Hal Delrich) have got her locked in the cellar Shelly (Sarah York) is next to turn followed by Linda (Betsy Baker) with the violence and horror notching up each passing minute.

So they're possessed right? Not zombies? I kind of agree, they're not zombie per se, as Romero envisaged them but the fact they can be sliced, diced and dismembered and still keep going tells me they can survive death and it's not black and white. A zombie is a reanimated corpse and though they don't explicitly die before being possessed there's definitely a lot of ambiguity as to what they actually become. To go alongside their new demoniacally possessed souls they're bodies mutate, wither and change. They don't exactly look alive any more and they're now seemingly able to survive the sort of damage that would certainly kill them if they were. They're also actually pretty similar to the undead from The Return of the Living Dead and you can see the influence. The tape also informs them that the only way to kill the demons for good is total dismemberment, though even like in Return the body parts still show signs of life even after extreme separation. Watching the many extras on the Blu-ray the word zombie also seems to be synonymous with the demons and is used regularly by the cast. Let's be clear though, I don't think this is a zombie-film; it's a horror possession film with zombie-like protagonists.

There's not a lot more that needs to be said. Raimi perfectly understands what a horror film requires. The pacing is perfect from the brief slow build up to the riotous finale. The demons are genuinely unsettling and the gore, effects and staged brutality are brilliantly choreographed just sitting the right side of comedic. Such is the over top violence and effects at times, it can also make watching the film disquieting and uncomfortable and I found myself more than once chuckling just to break the unease. Much is also often said about the relatively poor effects forced on them because of such a limited budget, and the jerky stop motion scenes at the end but I feel it all adds to the charm and the dream like, unreal feeling the film evokes.

In many ways the film shouldn't work. The narrative is simple and formulaic, the effects are amateurish and the whole production is ludicrously over the top and overly ambitious, but somehow Raimi made it all come together. Not a zombie film in the strictest use of the term, The Evil Dead is still a horror film with demon-zombies in and one that has certainly influenced the genre ever since. It's as near the perfect horror film as you're going to get, 10/10.

Steven@WTD.

King of the Zombies - review

 

1941 (USA)

2010 included on Ultimate Horror Classics SD Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Now this is why I'm doing this. How else would I have firstly come across then secondly chosen to watch and actually appreciate such an old world black and white gem.

It's World War 2 and pilot James "Mac" McCarthy (Dick Purcell), passenger  Bill Summers (John Archer) and his black manservant Jefferson "Jeff" Jackson (Mantan Moreland) off course and running low on fuel crash land on a small Caribbean island guided by a faint radio signal. Here they take refuge in nearby mansion owned by a refuge Austrian Dr. Miklos Sangre (Henry Victor, but originally penned for  Béla Lugosi) who tells them they will have to remain his guests for several weeks before the next supply ship arrives.

Forced to sleep and eat with the other servants the hilarious star of the film Jeff sits to eat and is informed quite openly by the other servants that many zombies also work and live at the mansion. Unnerved by this but trying not to make much fuss he settles down to sleep only to be approached by two. Thus begins a genuinely funny back and forward between him and his employer and pilot. He knows what he's seen and they know he can't of. I really can't emphasise how good Mantan Moreland is at playing this role with quick perfectly timed one-liners and perfect interplay with the straight men.

All the while Dr. Sangre in his secret underground caves is preparing a rite of transmigration to extract important war information from a previous crash victim, an Admiral Arthur Wainwright by transferring his thoughts through the Doctors hypnotised wife.

It's daft stuff but it knows it with each actor whether playing the US jock pilot or colonial have-a-brandy-stay-calm gent all hamming it up from start to end.  While the characters are all complete colonial racial stereotypes, and wouldn't be tolerated today, it is very much a product of its time and playing up these roles is an integral part of the comedy. Beyond this I'd even argue that if anything its all quietly subversive as it's Jeff that really solves the mystery and provides all the entertainment while the two white men stumble about clueless. There's even the symbolism inherent in having one of these white guys turn into a zombie taking his place alongside and equal to the black undead.

It's the 1940s and way before Romero so the word zombie still comes with drums and voodoo attached. Very much under the control of their master the zombies in King of the Zombies are the recently deceased, dug up and reanimated by magic. They stare blindly ahead and shuffle around doing their masters bidding very much like in White Zombie or The Plague of the Zombies. We learn they respond to a clap and require food as if implying reanimation is exactly that, back alive but without the mind or soul. In a hilarious scene with Jeff hypnotised into believing he one of the zombies he complains about the lack of salt in the food. Samantha, the Maid (Marguerite Whitten) who has taken a bit of a shine to Jeff tells him not only shouldn't he be talking if he's a zombie, but eating salt is bad for zombies, re-killing them and if he was a zombie he wouldn't have a reflection in a mirror. Interesting stuff...

It's quirky and silly with few sets and awkward conversation but far and away, not only one of my favourite old zombie films but perhaps one of my favourite to date and I'm actually already keen to watch it again. I believe it also has some part to play in the zombie story too despite never seeing it really referenced. In the big finale Mac, now a zombie definitely raises his arms as he goes for Dr. Sangre. I heard the phrases 'living dead', 'she lives but walks in the land of those beyond', 'zombiefied' and even 'dezombified' and I can't recall hearing them before. A very easily loveable black-comedy, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.

Day of the Dead (2008) - review

2008 (USA)

2008 Optimum Home Entertainment Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains spoilers.

This film does so many things wrong it's hard to know where to start.

Let's start with the obvious; the name and let's get one thing straight. This is not a remake, nor a re-imagining, nor a reboot; it's the ability to stick Romero's name and namesake on the cover to give a third rate zombie cash-in a semblance of legitimacy. Rather than showing any bravery or recognition of the original it's yet another formulaic zombie origin story with the merest acknowledge of the original story and ideas. We're at ground zero again, at the time and place when the zombie virus emerges and we're not watching as in the original, a tense group of disparate powerful characters locked in a power struggle, isolated and unclear who if anyone is left alive, instead the focus is on a bunch of pretty teens running from one place to another screaming.

I get ahead of myself. The small town of Leadville, Colorado has been quarantined by the military because of an outbreak of the sniffles (though we do find out later there's more than a flu-epidemic behind the 6 or 7 man town blockade). Trevor (Michael Welch) and his girlfriend, Nina (AnnaLynne McCord), back from a kiss and a cuddle at the nearby underground bunker conveniently open to the public, unite with Trevor's sister Corporal Sarah Cross (Mena Suvari) who is part of the quarantine unit, discover their mother is ill and take her to the hospital where pretty much the rest of the town are all waiting to be seen. So with everyone in one place, a highly infectious air born virus and doctors and the military wandering round brazenly without masks trying to deduce what's going on with a doctor from the CDC, the virus shows its final symptom and it's chaos, blood, screaming and carnage.

Let's take it step by step. You get the sniffles, then a nose bleed, you feel a bit rough, you go a bit quiet, then suddenly your eyes cloud over turning milky white, you explode in hickies and you want to eat your friends. Oh, and you can now move at superhuman speed, leap large distances and crawl on the walls and ceilings. Now, I'm quite the fan of the new modern Boyle quick and nimble undead and I could even stomach them, at a push, in a Romero associated modern movie, but this is all too much. It's all too fanciful and fantastical; suddenly they're not dead-humans but possessed demons or something and you find yourself less immersed and less scared. Miner and Reddick seem to know what makes a modern zombie what it is and there are times it kind of all works, the scene of carnage in the hospital waiting room is particularly good, and while I'm not overly fond the instant blood sores the zombies all made up well with a good emphasis on teeth. For some reason though they decided this wasn't enough and it would be cooler to speed them up and give them tricks and you know what, it's not. One last thing, have you spotted what's missing? They don't explicitly die, they kind of turn, it's ambiguous but I'm going to give them a pass. Bud (more of him later) comments that Trevor and Sarah's mum has gone very cold just before she turns, add to this that they still obey the basic zombie rule of requiring a good whack to the head to be taken down and I'm happy to think they are dead, even if it's never actually stated.

So I don't like the zombies. I also don't like the plot and story, or what there is of it. Miner and Reddick have fashioned an incoherent , nonsensical narrative full of holes as if like their zombies they decided at the last minute they weren't good enough on their own and it needed this added or that tinkered with, without seeing how it would affect the film as a whole. From continuity errors like Sarah leaving at what looks like the middle of the afternoon to drive across town, arriving in the pitch dark, or deciding to add a super-zombie boss or giving zombie soldiers guns to fire; it's one sigh-worthy decision after another and turns the thing into both a bit of a mess and a farce. Also don't get me started on the call back to 'Bub', by having Bud turn into 'the friendly zombie' because perhaps he's a vegetarian or he fancies her; it feels forced in and doesn't work.

Miner and Reddick seem to have really missed the memo of what makes a good zombie film, fashioning an over-engineered incoherent shambles that bears no semblance to the film it's taken the name of. It constantly treats the viewer like an idiot opening up giant chasms in plot logic and reasoning to enable the narrative to move forward. There's a constant reliance on convenient items and events that feel out of place and forced and only there to enable subsequent overly-staged scenes or sequences. The only redeeming feature is really the cast who I feel actually do a half decent job with the script and story, and ironically I found them all quite likeable, even if they are all rather simplistic and one dimensional. Special mention must go to Ving Rhames as Captain Rhodes who now holds the title of daftest and most entertaining zombie noise of all time for his wobbling cheeks rasping groan.

There is a good film somewhere here and maybe it all got lost in post production but what we're really left with when all is said and done, is a zombie film as stale and formulaic as you're going to get made worse by lots of unwelcome and misguided high level decisions. It really isn't very good and it's rather an insult to Romero's original. Pass this one by, 3/10.

Steven@WTD.

The Horde - review

2009 (France)

2010 Momentum Pictures Home Ent DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

After the warm and fuzzy Warm Bodies and rather timid by today's standard The Plague of the Zombies I felt the need for something, as they say in the film, a bit more hardcore.

La Horde or The Horde as it was called for a US audience that probably got confused, is an unreserved comic book action film with zombies. In a good making of documentary extra, French directors and writers Benjamin Rocher and Yannick Dahan were unabashed in their aims, declaring they wanted foremost to make an action film from the 80s that was over the top, excessive and foremost very European centric. Whilst they loved zombies they cared little of established genre traditions, especially the US Romero flavour, they would make the zombies work for the action and not vice versa. I'm in the camp that says genre conventions are there to be broken or else there is the danger it would all become stale and look forward to seeing new things being tried, and in all honesty having now watched some of the most visceral, brutal zombie scenes I've yet seen, I really don't think they don't care about zombies.

La Horde doesn't waste time. Four Parisian police offers covertly infiltrate a dilapidated, high rise on the outskirts of town to take revenge on a crime boss who has killed one of their own. They get it hopelessly wrong, get captured and then without warning the end of the world falls down on all of them a like a proverbial ton of shit-bricks. It's visceral, impactful, shocking and sudden. One second they're at odds, police vs gangsters, and I'd even had to quickly check the box to see that I'd got the right film, that it wasn't an action cop film, the next the world is literally trying to break their door down and brutally slaughter and eat them.

The zombies in La Horde are mean, nasty, gnarly bad-asses with teeth like piranhas. They're as quick as those in Boyles' 28 Days Later but stronger and more vicious, sadistic and unrelenting and whilst I'm used to the-shooting-them-in-the-body-has-no-effect - got-to-shoot-them-in-the-head trope I've never seen it played out quite so extremely. Rocher and Dahan weren't kidding when they said they wanted over the top comic book action, and from their first appearance every encounter is frantic, on the edge, visceral and very, very bloody. With frenetic camera work with shake, speed-ups, breaks and strobe effects the feeling of panic and desperation is pervasive and adds to the brilliantly to an unremitting pace. It reminded me a lot of Rec which came out while they were shooting.

For all the blood, gore and genuine attention at making up the zombies to look as evil and dangerous as possible, the comic book over-tone somehow makes the film not actually that scary. The over the top fight scenes and heavy reliance on hand to hand combat, with excessive use of head butts, speeded up and repetitious hit-sequences give it all an almost surreal, comical feel. You know those sequences in tom and jerry when jerry would hit tom with a frying pan over and over in a loop; they're like that. The film really is also, when all said and done, just a sequence of these scenes too, with the time spent in between just short breathers before moving us quickly onto the next. It's all highly stylised with original touches of flourish, and immaculately shot but it's all a little shallow and you wonder whether they should have been a little more ambitious.

A tight, claustrophobic high intensity action zombie film La Horde is a relentless assault of the senses. As bloody and gory as anything else out there its comic book feel dampens the scares to leave more of a smile on your face than a feeling of discomfort. With some ludicrous over the top scenes and an audacious finale it's certainly very enjoyable though-out with much memorable characters and dialogue. La Horde is a recommended bloody roller-coaster ride that taught me two things. One, that whilst I entertain a longing for the zombie apocalypse, in reality it probably wouldn't be very nice and two, never fuck with a Nigerian, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Coming up - blog

I got the Warm Bodies review up last night and I've got some right beauties coming up. Some were recommended, some I just wanted.

I've had I Am Legend in mind since I started the blog and I know it's a push to call them zombies but it's been years since I've seen it and wanted to tackle it afresh.

The Horde and Before Dawn were recommended by Taliesin meets the Vampires and both sound brutal and amazing and I think one of these will be my next pick.

Dead Girl looks like it really splits opinion, so I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about.

Yes, that's The Plague of the Zombies and yes I reviewed it a few days ago after watching it in SD on TV with adverts and yes I'd forgotten I had the Blu-ray on order... I'll watch it again and watch the extras then amend. Ooops.

WTD

Warm Bodies - review

2013 (USA)

2013 Entertainment One Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains mild spoilers.

5 stars, "Brilliant", "Hilarious", "Charming", a pretty delightful, tongue-in-cheek romantic comedy; stop me here but it seems to have all the right ingredients for a shit sandwich. Now having watched it, I still kind of want to hate it; it's light and bubbly, a bit ridiculous and Twilight for the zombie generation (I assume, not having watched it, honest, ahem) but there's a big problem. It's just so darn extremely likeable.

Loosely based on Romeo and Juliet; which, despite the two stars of the film being called Julie (Teresa Palmer) and zombie 'R' (Nicholas Hoult) I only picked up on about three quarters of the way through the film during a reproduction of the iconic balcony scene, Warm Bodies is a love story, but a love story on steroids.

It's been 6 years since the zombie apocalypse. Society has collapsed and the world is over-run but mankind has managed to survive. Walled off from the infected, an enclave run by Colonel Grigio (John Malkovich), who is also Julie's father, survives by maintaining a strict isolationist policy with regular authorised excursions out to gather supplies.

Outside, across the city in the abandoned airport 'R' goes about his daily life as a zombie, albeit a slightly different zombie than we're accustomed to.  You see, 'R' has a self-aware inner narrator. Now obviously this requires some cinematic flight of fancy as if he really was this self aware, he'd not quite be the mindless shuffling flesh eating zombie he provides commentary on.

My take is zombie-ism in Warm Bodies is more a condition. They're still very much the same person they were before, with the same brains, personalities and dare I say soul, but they're devoid of all empathy, sympathy and life. It's almost a sleep like state where only a small part of the self is allowed to gently bob to the surface in a mindless sea of grey. They're aware they're still in there, deep down, suppressed and only visible for mere fleeting moments, and it's this awareness that drives them to seek out the one thing that can momentarily pull them out of the malaise: human flesh and brains. You see when they eat the brains of the living them momentarily gain the victims memories in an explosion of colour and life, and it's this insatiable desire to be woken from the nightmare that drives their hunger. Yet there are those that stop clinging on to life, who give in to the sleep and they're called 'bonies'. Ripping off their remaining skin and abandoning the last vestments of their humanity they succumb to the monster becoming the true undead villains of the film now unrecognisable from the people they once were and soulless. In some respects it only in this state that people are truly lost forever and dead; the real zombies?

It's during one of these awakenings that 'R' consuming the brains of Julie's boyfriend has an epiphany; as he relives the love Perry had for Julie and gazes across the room at her as her companions are slaughtered he simply put falls in love. This love brings with it new self awareness and so fuelled with love-ade 'R' takes it upon himself to protect Julie at all costs. He camouflages her in zombie-juice (like in The Walking Dead) and takes her to his secret man-den where he starts to demonstrate increasing autonomy, self and affection for her.

I've managed to get this far without talking about love but I'm going to have to address it at some point. Warm Bodies really does have the love conquers all idea permeate though out.  For all the this is film is about zombies, surviving and salvation it's still very much a love story. Like Romeo and Juliet their love is boundless, eternal and can't be squashed; and going into this I doubted it could really be pulled off with any kind of credibility but it is. Their relationship is subtle, sweet and believable.

It's also unapologetically optimistic like an episode of Star Trek where you know how ever bad things appear to be getting, everything will ultimately end out great. There will the odd ensign expendable along the way, there will be trials and tribulations but it'll never get overly bloody or scary and the positive message that humanity is too strong to fail and will always prevail is central.

It's also important to remember that it is still a comedy. There are a lot of throw away lines from 'R' and Julie that kind of break the spell a little but taken with a grain of salt are funny and make the film the success it is. Director Jonathon Levine said he hoped zombie enthusiasts would be open to a new twist on the genre and I unequivocally say that I am. I came in to this quite sceptical but came away genuinely gushing. A heart warming light fresh zombie rom-com that does pretty much everything right, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.

The Plague of the Zombies - review

1966 (UK)

2012 Studio Canal Hammer Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains spoilers.

When I started to put a list together of those films and TV series that had most helped frame and influence the zombie tradition I came to realise there was actually quite a commonly held well defined lineage. White Zombie from 1932 with its Haitian voodoo was flawed and hammy but every good thing has to start somewhere. Matheson with the I Am Legend and The Last Man on Earth brought us vampires/zombies and helped define their behaviour with the whiff of infection and apocalypse all without magic. And then we always jump to 1968 and Romero with Night of the Living Dead which is where it all really took off. Or are we missing something?

Well a couple of years before this, Hammer Horror, a little UK niche horror studio brought out The Plague of Zombies and now having seen it I'm firmly of the belief it deserves a lot more kudos and acknowledgement in this origin story than it currently gets.

It's 1860 and Sir James Forbes (André Morell) with his daughter Sylvia Forbes (Diane Clare) have responded to a letter for help from his old understudy Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams). Tompson writes that he is struggling to understand the large series of maladies and deaths that is plaguing his local Cornish parish and could Sir James offer some assistance. Arriving at the doctors house they find Alice (Jacqueline Pearce), the doctors wife acting preoccupied and listless, and a Doctor not only taking the blame for the parishioners' deaths but hand-tied in not being able to do autopsies to find the reason by the local magistrate and lord of the manor Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson). Also, I'm not Columbo and I don't think I'll be spoiling anything but early signs point to Squire Clive  being the nefarious villain and cause of the problems, due mainly to the very obvious low-key menacing scooby-doo music that starts the moment he makes an appearance.

Not one to be told what to do Sir James starts throwing his title around. He investigates the burials, discovers missing bodies, hears witness accounts of the dead wandering the moors, and we soon come to share his realisation that the dead are afoot causing mischief. Ok, we're back to a time where zombie was synonymous with voodoo and magic and it's all White Zombie but even I wasn't prepared for just how zombie with a capital Z the undead would actually be.

Other than an early fleeting glimpse, it is the reanimation in all its glory of Alice herself, some forty or so minutes in and subsequent dream of Dr. Tompson, that brings zombies while not kicking and screaming, more shuffling and groaning, to the foreground of the film, and the scenes cement the films position as an important player in establishing iconic zombie lore. It's powerful and dramatic, tense and brilliantly paced. At first you're looking down at a deceased loving wife, then slowly her skin pales and ages, you hold your breath, waiting, then two piercing white eyes shoot open, dead and devoid of the soul they once housed. Imitated a thousand times this scene is now a zombie staple, a horror trope. Alice is gone and as Sir James cries out 'it's a zombie' you understand you're witnessing a genre taking creating its identity. Then out she crawls, as clear as day, the Romero zombie, but before and without Romero, climbing out of the dirt, cold and dead; then upright shuffling, with arms stretching out towards the living, and there's even a pale blue tint to her skin. It's good, nay, great stuff and unflinching, our survivor, Sir James deals with Alice the only way one should; he attacks her head, removing it with a spade.

The Plague of the Zombies is a cracking little film full of atmosphere and drama. I've always enjoyed a good Hammer Horror film though I'd never taken them that seriously but this ranks as one of its finest. The story never wanders off and remains tight and coherent. It's well acted and well directed and the action and effects are actually very solid.

You're never going to get visceral gory effects and hyper realistic make-up in a film that's half a century old but even so, the zombies are a made up a lot darker and more gruesome than I expected and dare I say even Romero's, reminding me more of Fulci's efforts which came a decade or so later. Also it's not as brave or contemporary as Night of the Living Dead, firmly entrenched in the idea of the traditional horror film narrative, echoing, not challenging prevalent class structure and misogyny, but then again it's a film set in the mid 19th Century in rural England. One aso can't ignore the elephant in the room; like White Zombie it takes the idea of the voodoo master, of magic and mind control learnt in the 'dark continents', of raising the dead to use as servants, and of ensnaring young pretty girls, and it's all far flung from Romero's apocalyptic global vision but there's room for both.

Ok, I'll say it. The Plague of the Zombies is one of the pivotal films in establishing  zombie canon. It might have all been done before but never quite with such panache pulling it all together in a brilliant narrative with iconic scenes. Regardless of all this I still think its a really good zombie film and it has everything you want; suspense, drama, good characters, good acting, deaths and turning; I really enjoyed it. And finally, maybe, just maybe it could be argued that it's maybe just as important as Night of the Living Dead, maybe, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.